Stationary battery manufacturer Hithium opened its new intelligent production plant in Chongqing, China, to visitors and employees with a daylong event focused on the company’s sustainability achievements and goals. The key focus was on the ways that Hithium is meeting its commitment to support the UN’s Sustainable Development Goals, in particular Goal 7. By concentrating innovations on affordability and reducing LCOS, the manufacturer aims at increasing access to energy storage and the role storage plays in the broader transition to renewable energies.
Hithium Eco-Day. Image Credit: Business Wire
In addition to Hithium’s progress toward its broader environmental targets, the event highlighted the efficiency increases and resulting cost decreases of its intelligent manufacturing development. These also underscore the company’s sustainability commitment to Goal 7, subsection 3, and its focus on improving energy efficiency. Together with the tour of its facility, Hithium also offered its Eco-Day visitors a preview of the company’s new technology, including the manufacturer’s first small-capacity cell designed specifically to lift people out of energy poverty along with a groundbreaking utility-scale product.
In his Eco-Day presentation of the company’s product roadmap and business strategy, Hithium Co-founder and CEO, Jason Wang, said: “We’re focused on making the energy transition affordable, to help accelerate the adoption of clean power. Our new technology and our battery production innovations all serve this goal. When we lower LCOS for partners, we can make energy storage more bankable for asset owners. When we lower the cost for end consumers living in energy poverty, they gain more access to more reliable clean power. For Eco-Day, we’re celebrating this progress on the production and the product fronts.”
Sneak Peek: World’s First Small-Capacity Cell Designed for Affordability for Off-Grid Energy Consumers
Hithium revealed a new universal 1 kWh battery product, the “Hero EE,” for use in areas where there is no reliable grid and millions of households or small businesses have only few or low-power appliances. Their basic needs can thus be met through a small-scale, affordable energy storage product. The cell can be charged with an extra low current from solar power or a local microgrid and aims to increase access to electricity for people where energy supply is not yet reliable or affordable.
With the new product, Hithium is targeting the UN Sustainable Development Goals on both the fronts, of access to affordable energy and of upgrading technology for countries where many still live in energy poverty.
Breaking Out of EV-Scale with First Truly Utility-Focused Battery Product
As part of the company’s Eco-Day celebration, Hithium unveiled the first kAh-level battery design for long-duration storage of 4 to 8 hours, called “MIC 1130 Ah”. The new product, a sample of which will be available in the first quarter of 2024, will represent unprecedented new battery technology for the utility-scale energy storage market, breaking the 1000 Ah barrier for the first time.
Shift to Highly Automated Intelligent Manufacturing Delivers 25% Cost Reduction
Playing a central role in Hithium’s production expansion plans, the intelligent facility at Chongqing achieves a ca. 30% increase in efficiency compared to Hithium's last generation manufacturing facility. The plant features a significantly higher level of automation that enables the company to cut the cost of battery production there by a quarter.